nvidia to reduce RTX 2060 supply, focus on Ampere

[porina]

Quotes

Quote

It is said that NVIDIA has issued an internal notice to board partners (AICs) that it will be adjusting, in this case limiting, the supply of GeForce RTX 2060 graphics cards this month. This is still a very popular SKU in the NVIDIA lineup.

Sources

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-reportedly-to-boost-geforce-rtx-30-production-capacity-by-limiting-rtx-2060-supply

 

Summary

nvidia are still selling RTX 2060 GPUs as it is a popular lower cost option. They have apparently issued a notice to board makers they will be reducing supply of these, to put more focus on Ampere. It is noted that Turing is made at TSMC compared to Ampere at Samsung. This could suggest that fab capacity is not the limiting factor and that components other than the GPU itself are the limit to supply right now.

 

My thoughts

Some might be surprised that 2060 are still made but for now there is no other product offering from nvidia at that performance (and implicitly price) level. I have to speculate if the 3050 is not far off, as that should be performance comparable to a 2060. It wouldn't make sense to offer overlapping products, although some 2060 production will likely continue to service existing contracts e.g. system builders who plan for a certain period, and warranty scenarios.

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

x

[PeachGr]

Well 3060 is close to 2060 super for gaming. I hope a 3050 will come and be produced in tons to fill the market, hopefully at a performance similar to 2060

[porina]

5 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Well the RTX 3060 is closely priced at least in the UK to the 2060, both being at around 500£ from retailers, not ebay. And according to pc part picker in the US you can find an RTX 3070 for around 600$ at the moment from Adorama, while the cheapest 2060 is about at 600$. So I don't know about that.

For many reasons I wouldn't use street pricing to compare right now. Big system builders will have their own pricing.

 

3 minutes ago, PeachGr said:

Well 3060 is close to 2060 super for gaming. I hope a 3050 will come and be produced in tons to fill the market, hopefully at a performance similar to 2060

The article specifically refers to the 2060 not super, which uses a different die. Without looking at previous generations for direct comparison, presuming the 3050 will use a smaller die than 3060 and allow relatively more to be made. More supply, lower cost.

[Taf the Ghost]

They're clearly shifting memory supply into Ampere cards. A little surprised this hadn't happened earlier, but I also don't know the time-lag inherent in Nvidia's supply chain. GPUs in that range normally have a 4-5 years main sales cycle, so it's hard to say if it's really an actual out-of-expectation change or just the normal decline phase of production.

[porina]

GPU	Die	Mem type	Mem GB	Mem width
RTX 3050 laptop	GA107	GDDR6	4	128
RTX 3050 Ti laptop	GA107	GDDR6	4	128
RTX 3060	GA106	GDDR6	12	192
RTX 3060 Ti	GA104	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 3070	GA104	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 3070 Ti	GA104	GDDR6X	8	256
RTX 3080	GA102	GDDR6X	10	320
RTX 3080 Ti	GA102	GDDR6X	12	384
RTX 3090	GA102	GDDR6X	24	384
RTX 2060	TU106	GDDR6	6	192
RTX 2060 TU104	TU104	GDDR6	6	192
RTX 2060 Super	TU106	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 2070	TU106	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 2070 Super	TU104	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 2080	TU104	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 2080 Super	TU104	GDDR6	8	256
RTX 2080 Ti	TU102	GDDR6	11	352
Titan RTX	TU102	GDDR6	24	384

 

Hope table works above. Tried to summarise die/mem config of RTX cards to date. I missed one detail, the 3050 (Ti) already exists for laptops. This makes an impending release for desktop even more likely. Laptop models have 4GB of vram which is low for desktops today. Laptops tend to tolerate lower specs. I'd expect they'll double that to 8GB, since we have precedent with the 12GB 3060 setting a minimum of 8GB for current desktop performance gaming.